Trump Told Aides He’s Afraid to Visit Troops in Combat Zones: Report

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Updated Nov. 20, 2018 5:19AM ET / Published Nov. 20, 2018 1:44AM ET

Leah Millis/Reuters

President Trump has reportedly privately told aides and White House officials that he is reluctant to visit troops in Iraq or Afghanistan because of the long flights and security risks. “He’s never been interested in going,” one unnamed official told The Washington Post on Monday. “He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.” The president has only recently begun discussing tentative plans to visit troops amid increasing criticism of his attitude toward the military, the Post reports. He has been under pressure to visit U.S. troops for several months, and the issue took on new relevance after he angered veterans by skipping a visit to a World War I military cemetery in Paris this month and then opted not to go to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day. More recently, he lashed out at the former head of U.S. Special Operations Command, retired Adm. William H. McRaven, who led the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. On Sunday, Trump claimed McRaven should have caught bin Laden “a lot sooner” and mocked him as a “Hillary Clinton fan.”